The information on this blog about the corruption in America's courts will disgust and frighten you and propel you into a world of racketeering, greed, larceny, malicious prosecution, and outrageous disdain for due process, the Rule of Law, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Professional Responsibility Standards, Rules and Statutes. This is the Unified Court System of New York State. You will be a victim unless you speak up and protest. by Betsy Combier

Lawyers Accused of Facebook Spying Can Face Ethics Complaint, State High Court Rules

New Jersey’s highest court ruled Tuesday that two defense lawyers accused of spying on a plaintiff’s Facebook page can be prosecuted for attorney misconduct.

The case dealt with what what the court described as a “novel ethical issue.” Two defense attorneys in New Jersey are accused of snooping on the private Facebook account of a plaintiff suing their client. The Facebook account was at first publicly viewable. But after the plaintiff tightened the settings and put his profile page behind a privacy wall, the lawyers didn’t stop monitoring it. A paralegal at their firm was able to get access by sending a Facebook friend request to the plaintiffs without revealing her employer.

The plaintiff, Dennis Hernandez, was suing the Borough of Oakland in Bergen County over injuries he claimed he sustained when a police car allegedly struck him in 2007. The two attorneys, John J. Robertelli and Gabriel Adamo, represented Oakland. Mr. Hernandez, according to the opinion, figured out the connection when the defense lawyers “sought to add the paralegal as a trial witness and disclosed printouts” from his Facebook page, according to the court’s opinion.

The New Jersey Supreme Court wasn’t deciding if the two lawyers violated ethics or should face sanction. The court was ruling on whether the head of the state’s attorney disciplinary body could prosecute the lawyers for alleged Facebook spying after a regional disciplinary body chose to drop the case. The local body didn’t think the lawyers’ actions, even if proven, constituted unethical conduct. The director of the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics, an arm of the state judiciary, disagreed and filed a complaint against the defense attorneys.

The complaint filed by the Office of Attorney Ethics director accuses the two lawyers of communicating with a represented party without proper consent and engaging in conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” among other ethics charges.

The two lawyers charged in the complaint claimed that they had “acted in good faith” and “had not committed any unethical conduct.” In their explanation of what happened, they said they were “unfamiliar with the different privacy settings on Facebook.”

Michael S. Stein, an attorney representing the two lawyers, said that while the ruling didn’t go their way, the opinion underscored a lack of “playbook or precedent for how these attorneys should have dealt with the circumstances they were confronted with in 2008.”

The next big step in the slow-moving litigation is a hearing on the merits of ethics complaint, Mr. Stein said.

In the opinion, New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner noted the unusual nature of the attorney ethics probe in question: “No reported case law in our State addresses the sort of conduct alleged,” he wrote.

Bar association guidelines have discouraged lawyers from monitoring personal profile pages of jurors, witnesses and opposing parties if access to the content requires special permission.

Voters across New York are telling horror stories about
their inability to cast a ballot because of everything from broken voting
machines to clerical errors over shared middle names.

Alba
Guerrero was dumbfounded. She’d arrived at her polling place in Ozone Park,
Queens only to be told that she had been registered as a Republican since 2004.

That
was news to her. She remembers registering to vote for the first time as a
Democrat so she could vote for Barack Obama in the general election in 2008.
When she recently moved from Manhattan to Ozone Park, in Queens, she
re-registered at the DMV, she says, and even checked online on March 9th to be
sure she was registered at her new address.

But
when she showed up to vote forBernie Sandersat PS63 on Tuesday, she says she was told she couldn’t. New York
is a closed primary, where only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic
Primary—and voters had to be registered by last October. She was told—very
politely, she wants to make clear—by poll workers to take it up with a judge.
She was given a court order in nearby Forest Hills.

Guerrero drove to the Queens
County Board of Elections and pled her case, but Judge Ira Margulis initially
turned her away.

But on her way out she saw a Board
of Elections worker holding something with her name on it. It was her 2004
voter registration, replete, she remembers, with her name, her social security
number, her birthday—and someone else’s signature.

Sure enough, the signatures are
strikingly different. Next to a box checked “Republican,” her 2004 signature is
written in clear, deliberate, legible cursive and includes her middle name. Her
more recent signature is a loopy, illegible scrawl. She insists she’s never
changed it in her life, and says she can produce old tax forms to prove it.

So Guerrero went back to to Judge
Margulis and showed him the discrepancy.

“He allowed me to change for that
day,“ she said.

Guerrero’s voting nightmare had a
happy ending. She says the people working the polling stations were incredibly
helpful, and she was able to drive back and forth with her car and a lot of
sticktoitiveness. But voting in New York’s primaries on Tuesday posed many
unsolvable problems for would-be voters—from polling places that opened late to
broken voting machines.

"We are deeply disturbed by
what we’re hearing from polling places across the state. From long lines and
dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit
ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls,
what’s happening today is a disgrace,"Bernie Sanderscampaign spokesperson Karthik
Ganapathy told The Daily Beast.

"We need to be making it
easier for people to vote, not inventing arbitrary obstacles—and today’s
shameful demonstration must underline the urgent importance of fixing voting
laws across the country."

The many messes drew rare national
attention to the sad sate of voting in New York City, where broken machines,
erroneous counts and worse are commonplace experiences.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who tweeted
at 11:50 a.m., “There’s nothing more punk rock than voting. #GetOutAndVote”,
had to change his tune by the end of the day. WNYC reported this morning that
126,000 Brooklyn Democrats had beenremoved from
the voting rolls since last fall.

“It has been reported to us from
voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain
numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters
from the voting lists,” he said in a statement released after 5 p.m. on
Election Day. “I am calling on the Board of Election to reverse that purge and
update the lists again using Central, not Brooklyn borough, Board of Election
staff.”

Bernie Sanderssupporters took to social media sites like
Twitter and Reddit to decry what they believed to be rampant irregularities at
polling places. On the largest subreddit dedicated to his campaign, users
compiled a “Voting irregularities and issues megathread” that boasts over 1,700
posts and hotline numbers for voters who believe they have been
disenfranchised.

A spokesperson for New York
Attorney Eric Schneiderman told the New York Daily News that his office
received “by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an
election since Attorney General Schneiderman took office in 2011.”

Then there are the extraordinary
examples, like Guererro’s and Ben Gershman’s.

Gershman met Guerrero and took a
cell phone video of her competing signatures at the Queens County BOE. He had
arrived there to fight for his right to vote, also forBernie Sanders.

He had checked his status two
weeks before the registration deadline online to see if he was, in fact,
registered to vote in the primary in Queens. He had registered at the DMV when
he moved to Queens six months ago, but there was a hangup: There was a man in
the Bronx with the same name and a shared middle initial, and he wasn’t
registered to vote as a Democrat.

So Gershman repeatedly emailed the
Board of Elections in the last few days to sort it out (he forwarded those
emails to The Daily Beast to verify his story), and received assurances that he
would be able to vote from various BOE workers.

Still, Gershman arrived at his
polling place at 7:45 a.m. today to find that he could not vote and that he,
too, would have to drive to Forest Hills to appeal for his right to vote.

By the end of it, Gershman didn’t
get to work until 12 p.m., but—three car rides later—he did get to vote for his
candidate.

“I spent three hours this morning
trying to vote,” he said. “I’m at a loss for words. I don’t understand that in
the 21st century you have to stand in front of a judge to get to vote. It was
laughable.”

Gershman was peeved by what
happened to him, but he wonders what would’ve happened if he didn’t have a car,
or the ability to miss a morning of work to fight for his ballot. And he’s also
confounded by what happened to Guerrero’s voter registration form, which he
shared on YouTube and calls “pretty clear fraud.”

Guerrero calls the whole incident
“creepy.” She has “no idea” who might want to forge her signature on a voter
registration form.

“It’s just disheartening. We’re
supposed to be the number one country in the world, but things like this you’d
imagine would happen in a second or third-world country,” she said. “What
happened to me, basically, was fraud.”

Repeated calls to the New York
City Board of Elections went unanswered at press time.

A top aide to Mayor de Blasio had warned against putting the businessmen now at the center of the NYPD corruption scandal onto Hizzoner’s 2014 inaugural committee, The Post has learned.

But Avi Fink was blown off by de Blasio’s chief fund-raiser — whose campaign-finance work is under investigation — and also by the committee’s chairwoman.

Fink, a mayoral adviser on Jewish issues who is on leave working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, told Ross Offinger and Gabrielle Fialkoff that he had concerns about Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz, sources said Thursday.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

“People in the Orthodox community told Avi they had questions about where his money comes from and said he’s not a community activist, he’s only out for himself,” one source said.The red flags included doubts about how Reichberg, a prominent member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, had attained his wealth, sources said.

Another source said Rechnitz was well-known in the Bukharan Jewish community in Queens for clashing with Israeli billionaire and diamond merchant Lev Leviev over a business deal.

Jeremy Reichberg (left) and Jona Rechnitz

“He had a falling out with [Leviev] that may have tarnished his reputation,” the source said.

Offinger and Fialkoff, a jewelry heiress who now holds a $203,000-a-year City Hall job, let them join the committee anyway.

Perks of a committee appointment included seating at the Jan. 1 inauguration ceremony and a spot on a receiving line to congratulate the mayor, as well as an invitation to a Gracie Mansion breakfast the next Sunday.

Avi Fink

Rechnitz and his wife each donated the maximum $4,950 to de Blasio’s campaign, which the mayor has said he would return.

After de Blasio’s election, Reichberg hosted a fund-raiser at his Borough Park home that raked in $35,000 for the Campaign for One New York, the mayor’s now-defunct nonprofit.

Fink, Offinger and Fialkoff — who runs the de Blasio-created Office of Strategic Partnerships — did not return calls for comment.

A de Blasio campaign spokesman didn’t deny Fink’s warnings but issued a statement describing the inaugural committee as “a large, ceremonial group” whose “members were recommended and vetted by campaign staff and chosen by staff in partnership with the volunteer chairperson.”

Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen

The Judge Who Saved New York

Mayor de Blasio is barred from regulating banks. Crisis averted.

A meteor headed straight for the world’s financial center has been knocked off course. Federal Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York has prevented catastrophe in Gotham by knocking out the city’s 2012 Responsible Banking Act. The benefits will be felt far beyond New York.

The idea behind the law was to pressure banks to provide more loans to politically favored borrowers. The plan by the New York City Council was to take an obscure, routine function of approving banks to hold the city’s deposits and use it as leverage to assert a vast authority over lending that even many Washington regulators would envy.

Step one was creation of the Community Investment Advisory Board, charged with collecting data from banks on their efforts to offer services “most needed by low and moderate income individuals and communities.” The board was also deputized to examine what the banks were doing in “affordable housing,” foreclosure prevention, “community development” and other projects that might “positively impact” the city through activities such as “philanthropic work and charitable giving.”

Yes, the progressives who run New York City think it’s their business to pass judgment on private charitable donations. After the board had examined the banks and opined on how socially responsible they were, city bureaucrats were then empowered to use these judgments to determine which firms would be official deposit banks in New York City. The city would put out annual reports essentially grading each bank.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg thought this was illegal. Under longstanding precedent, banking regulation is conducted by the feds and states. Federal law states that “no national bank shall be subject to any visitorial powers except as authorized by federal law,” but the council overrode a Bloomberg veto.

The new board created by the law recently started demanding information from banks, including proprietary data that could reflect the health of the bank and involve trade secrets. A number of other big cities, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles, have also sought to enforce “responsible banking.”

Judge Failla found that the Responsible Banking Act is “preempted by federal and state law,” contains “unconstitutional provisions” at its heart and is “void in its entirety.” Under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, federal law trumps subordinate laws, so a city cannot simply choose to override national banking policy on a whim.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s lawyers argued that compliance was voluntary and the city is free to choose which banking services to purchase. But Judge Failla noted that the law had nothing to do with getting a better deal on the city’s checking accounts and everything to do with broad social goals. Cities are free to use their proprietary power to select the best services at the lowest cost, but not to use this as a pretext for unrelated regulation of activity already governed by state and federal law. As for the idea that banks didn’t have to participate, the judge noted that the law “secures compliance through public shaming of banks.”

Good for Judge Failla, Sullivan & Cromwell counsel Robert Giuffra who argued the case, and the citizens of New York City who have been saved from another progressive onslaught.

Sunny Shue, died Saturday June 26, 2010. Video that Sunny did on April 9 2010, asking for protection from Judge Joseph Golia. Wednesday...

September 2, 2009 Hearing With Senator John Sampson on Judicial Accountability in New York State

We went to a Hearing with Senator John Sampson on September 24, 2009 on the New York Judicial Syatem. A few people were able to speak, and many others signed up to speak at a later date...that Sampson never scheduled.

First published in print: Monday, January 11, 2010
Here we thought that the first order of business this year for state Senate Democratic leader John Sampson would be to help regain that institution's credibility by passing radical ethics reforms.

The need for them would seem to be brutally obvious, in the wake of the conviction of former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on federal corruption charges and Governor Paterson's calls for requiring state officials members to disclose their outside income. First, though, Mr. Sampson has joined a large Manhattan law firm where one of the founding partners is on the board of the state Trial Lawyers Association.
That's right. Mr. Sampson now works not only for the people of New York, but also for the firm of Belluck & Fox, according to a New York Post report.

His salary in the former position is a matter of public record, of course -- $88,500. His salary in his new job, however, is something Mr. Sampson isn't about to disclose.

Just as New Yorkers need to learn more about legislators' outside interests, Mr. Sampson offers them less.

Imagine, then, what people might think if this is one more year when the Legislature fails to pass ethics laws. Or if it does, only a watered down version of what's need to clean up an institution where criminal indictments and convictions have become too commonplace?

What were Mr. Sampson's priorities, they might wonder -- transparency in government, or shielding from both his own finances and Belluch & Fox's clients?

The same questions might be asked as well of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who holds a position of counsel to another Manhattan law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. Little is known by the public about that arrangement, too, thanks to the alarmingly inadequate financial disclosure requirements for legislators that Mr. Silver seems to think are entirely adequate. We know he works for that particular firm, one of the largest tort law firms in New York, but we don't know what the nature of his work is, or on whose behalf he does it.

That will become all the more relevant in the event someone else in the Legislature tries to push for rewriting the state's medical malpractice laws or otherwise changing tort laws this session. Two of the most powerful people in state government work for law firms closely associated with the leading opponent of such legislation, namely the Trial Lawyers Association.

In Mr. Silver's case, he rather famously said of his legal work a half-dozen years ago, "I don't think it's a conflict. How many times do you want to hear this?"

In Mr. Sampson's case, the word comes from his office that his outside work won't interfere with his official duties.

Not exactly endorsements of ethics reform, are they?

THE ISSUE:

The state Senate Democratic leader has another job, too, not that he wants to talk about it.

THE STAKES:

When ethics reform is a major issue, how serious is he about stronger financial disclosure requirements?

Electronic Libraries and FOIA Links

Accountability is the Key

Westchester Guardian TV

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Victims-of-Law

Who is a Victim-of-Law?Victims-of-Law are persons who have been subjected to tyrannical or arbitrary rulings or edicts in violation of constitutional and civil rights under the democratic maxim reminiscent of our Republic -- the "Rule of Law"

The victims of unethical and corrupt lawyers, judges and employees of the state and federal judiciary demand accountability from those who abuse the power of office while they remain absolutely immune. The media as well as the legislative and executive branches of government traditionally ignore these abuses. The judicial branch itself hurls insults at the victim claiming they are nothing more than a 'disgruntled litigant' while ignoring substantive allegations.

It is essential to empower the victims of legal abuses. Our strength is in our numbers thus the more people that demand their constitutional and civil rights the quicker they will be attained.

What most people do not comprehend is that judges are immune from civil lawsuits. If a judge unlawfully imprisoned someone or maliciously denied due process in a case that cost a litigant millions of dollars, it doesn't matter. There is no redress for the aggrieved person.

The emotional and physical health problems inherent in these abuses are now coming to light but the judicial branches throughout our country continue to avoid or deliberately ignore what they have helped to create.

This website hopes to publish documented proof of many of the deliberate violations of the 'rule of law, the doctrine upon which our Constitutional Republic is based.

This website hopes to publish documented proof of many of the deliberate violations of the 'rule of law, the doctrine upon which our Constitutional Republic is based.

What is the "Rule of Law"? Equality and the Law

The right to equality before the law, or equal protection of the law as it is often phrased, is fundamental to any just and democratic society. Whether rich or poor, ethnic majority or religious minority, political ally of the state or opponent--all are entitled to equal protection before the law.

The democratic state cannot guarantee that life will treat everyone equally, and it has no responsibility to do so. However, writes constitutional law expert John P. Frank, "Under no circumstances should the state impose additional inequalities; it should be required to deal evenly and equally with all of its people."

No one is above the law, which is, after all, the creation of the people, not something imposed upon them. The citizens of a democracy submit to the law because they recognize that, however indirectly, they are submitting to themselves as makers of the law. When laws are established by the people who then have to obey them, both law and democracy are served.

The Supreme CourtThe Framers considered the rule of law essential to the safekeeping of social order and civil liberties. The rule of law holds that if our relationships with each other and with the state are governed by a set of rules, rather than by a group of individuals, we are less likely to fall victim to authoritarian rule. The rule of law calls for both individuals and the government to submit to the law's supremacy. By precluding both the individual and the state from transcending the supreme law of the land, the Framers constructed another protective layer over individual rights and liberties. --Reprinted from U.S. Dept. of State

Judicial Immunity is AbsoluteIn an unprecedented degree of 'abuse of power' judges decreed themselves absolutely immune from civil suit when they are "acting maliciously and corruptly." In 1996 the 104th Congress passed the Federal Courts Improvement Act amending the Civil Rights statute to give further immunities to malicious and corrupt judges.

Sec. 309. Prohibition against awards of costs, including attorney's fees, and injunctive relief against a judicial officer.28 USC 2412 note.>> for Costs.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no judicial officer shall be held liable for any costs, including attorney's fees, in any action brought against such officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer's jurisdiction.(b) Proceedings in Vindication of Civil Rights.--Section 722(b) of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1988(b)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end thereof "except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity such officer shall not be held liable for any costs, including attorney's fees, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer's jurisdiction".

(c) Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights.--Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1983) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the first sentence: ``, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable''.

Advocate for truth and An End To Judicial Immunity

About Betsy Combier

Reporter, paralegal, advocate,I will investigate, search on the internet and in all data bases for information that will help a person in need of resolution to a problem.I believe in substantive and procedural due process for all individuals, groups and organizations and trademarked the term "e-accountability" to describe the purpose of my work. I am the parent of four daughters.

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Who is John Libecci?

On Sunday, August 16, 2009, a friend of a friend called me at approximately 2:10PM, a Mr. John Libecci. Mr. Libecci is, I understand, a private investigator who knows a friend of mine socially. I asked whether he could help me find out some information involving my federal court case filed in United States District court on June 8, 2009 involving the Surrogate Court and my mother's Will. After I told him about the property being taken by the court, he told me that the court never takes property without a reason; after I told him that the Will was never probated since I filed the Will (of my mom) on March 17, 1998), Mr. Libecci told me that "obviously the Will was not done right", and said that he worked for the Courts and the Judges. He would not tell me what he did for the Court and the judges, then hung up. If anyone has information about Mr. John Libecci please email me at betsy@parentadvocates.org. You may send me any information anonymously.